Dalida

Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti (Italian: [joˈlanda kriˈstiːna dʒiʎˈʎɔtti]; 17 January 1933 – 3 May 1987), professionally known as Dalida, was a French vocalist and actress, born in Egypt to Italian parents. She won the Miss Egypt beauty contest in 1954 and began a 31-year singing career in 1956, selling 170 million albums and singles worldwide.

Early life

Childhood in Cairo

Dalida was born Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti in Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt, on 17 January 1933. Her father Pietro Gigliotti (1904–1945) and mother Giuseppina (née Rossi, 1910–1971) were born in Serrastretta, Calabria in Italy. Pietro studied music in school and played violin in taverns; Giuseppina was a seamstress.

Unable to make a living in their hometown, the young couple moved to the Shubra district of Cairo the year they were married, where, between the births of Iolanda's older brother Orlando (1928–1992) and younger brother Bruno (1936), the Gigliotti family became well established in the community. In addition to earnings from Giuseppina's work, their social status benefited when Pietro became primo violino at Cairo's Khedivial Opera House, and the family bought a two-storey house.

At 10 months old, Iolanda caught an eye infection and had to wear bandages for 40 days. Sometimes crying day and night, her father would play lullabies on the violin to soothe her. She underwent eye operations between the ages of three and five. Having to wear glasses throughout elementary school, for which she was bullied, she later recalled: "I was [sic] enough of it, I would rather see the world in a blur than wear glasses, so I threw them through the window." Iolanda attended the Scuola Tecnica Commerciale Maria Ausiliatrice, an Italian Catholic school located in northern Shubra.

In 1940, Allied forces took her father and other Italian men from their quarter to the Fayed prison camp in the desert near Cairo. When Pietro was released in 1944, he returned home as a completely different person, he was a very violent person that Iolanda and other children in the neighbourhood were scared of him. She later recalled, "I hated him when he beat me, I hated him especially when he beat my mom and brothers. I wanted him to die, and he did." Iolanda was twelve when Pietro died of a brain abscess in 1945. That trauma influenced her search for a male partner the rest of her life.

Modeling, acting

n her teen years, Iolanda developed an interest in acting due to her uncle's job as a projectionist for a local cinema, and often participated in school performances at the end of the semester, becoming popular in the neighborhood. She graduated in 1951, but eventually started working as a copy typist in a pharmaceutical company in the same year. While required to work to financially help her family, Iolanda still had acting ambitions as she continued searching for an opportunity for a breakthrough.